Fear is a completely natural response to danger.
Fear is the way our organism protect us from imminent peril.
Fear is healthy. Fear is a response to threat, to protect us, to warn us.
Why, then, are we afraid of speaking up when there is no threat?
Why are we afraid to do what we like, to make ourself visible, without any danger in sight?
Why are we afraid to follow our intuition?
These questions are just to stimulate an healthy reflection that hopefully will take you out of your fight, flight or freeze response for a moment.
The scientific explanation to why we react, so often, with so much fear, can be best found in the consequences of stress. Stress produces adrenaline and cortisol in our body. These hormones are the appropriate biological response, if you are in a situation of danger, like encountering a bear or a tiger on your way. These hormones make you alert: the blood pressure goes up, the heart rate increases, the concentration of glucose in your blood increases and you are ready to face danger, your mind is focused and sharp, your reflexes are alert. You can face danger, use all resources to engage in fighting the danger and then go back to a normal functioning of the body, a sustainable operating of your biological machine.
If the physical condition created to face danger is protracted for a long period of time, it become a chronic state and you will see your body and your mind deteriorate. All sicknesses are said to be traced back to stress nowadays. So the important question to ask is:
Why do we get scared so easily? Why are we so stressed?
Well, fear comes from a lack of safety. Physical safety is not enough, we need most and foremost emotional safety and emotional safety is tricky. We should get it at home from our parents, however, that often doesn’t happen as who does not feel emotionally safe him or herself is typically not in state to offer to their children what they don’t have themselves.
The intention of providing safety to our children, is more often than not, present in parents across cultures: everybody desires to offer safety to their children, however, if you never experience emotional safety yourself, then, you have an harder task at hand that you may realize.
I feel this is where I can explain better how do I know that emotional safety is so important. IN the late fifties, psychologist Harry Harlow conducted a study with baby monkey to research the basic needs of infant and understand from there what drives their behaviours. Before was believed that babies were attaching to the one feeding them, however, Harlow’s experiment showed something different.
Harlow exposed a baby monkey to two surrogate mother, one made of wire and wood and the other made of foam, rubber and soft terry cotton. Sometimes the wooden and wire mother had food, and sometime the soft rubber mother did. The monkey was choosing the spend a significantly higher amount of time with the soft cotton surrogate mother either she had food or not. The conclusion reached with this experiment was that comfort, companionship and love are a basic need that support healthy development: feeling safe as a baseline.
Up until the fifties it was believed that attachment worked differently, that is was related to feeding children. This create an historic precedent for misconceptions and unwillingly created lack of safety that gone, then, passed down to the following generation. This alone could explain a lot of the lack of safety that is to be found in large quantities amongst people nowadays.
Another aspect to consider but that I don’t analyse to in depth is the standardization of schooling system and the structure of majority of work places in the public and private sector. There is overall a tendency towards standardization, conformism and order that is at risk to deprive the individual of his or her identity. There is less and less space to be different, to be original and authentic.
Sir Ken Robinson is famous to have said that the school system tends to kill creativity by educating people out of their creativity. The way this is done is mainly by demonizing mistake ‘what we do know is that if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. Kids will take a chance, if they don’t know they’ll have a go, they are not frightened of being wrong.’ Said Sir Ken Robinson.
A rediscovery of your relationship with your inner child and all his or her talents is definitely something I would encourage you to pursue in this quest towards safety, strength and the achievement of the most authentic version of yourself. However, this alone is a huge topic that I feel I need to keep for another time.
For now, the best first step towards healing is to acknowledge your lack of emotional safety and to embrace the idea of working to create increasingly more safety for yourself knowing that your offspring will benefit from that, as the safer you feel, the more safety you will be able to offer them.
If you are doubting if this is your case let me give you some example of how fear may manifest when you don’t feel safe:
- You may notice that you don’t feel comfortable saying what you really thing at work, with friends or even with your partner. This doesn’t need to happen everyday to highlight an issue with safety, however, if you do, sometime, refrain from speaking up when you have something to say, ask yourself ‘why’ you do it. Ask the ‘why?’ of the answer you find with the first why and keep digging with 5 whys. What you will discover about your fear and sense of emotional safety, should shade a lot of light on your personal situation and what really prevents you to express yourself freely;
- The way you occupy your time, during work, at home and in your free time, could also reveal a lot about your stress level, your fear engagement and your untapped potential. Why do you do what you do? Because it serve an higher purpose, something you feel you came to this life to accomplish? Or just because? How do you feel if you dig also here with 5 whys to find out why you do what you do. Do you function from a place of fear or from a place of safety?;
- We all possess the ability to perceive our environment, we all have intuition, however, not all of us use it. When I use my intuition and I express what my intuition brings me and I have in front of me someone that is not as comfortable with intuition I often get one of these reactions:
o How do you know that?
o How can you be sure?
o It doesn’t make any sense
To which my curiosity goes straight to a completely different level of elaboration. I want to know how they feel if they listen to what I say, I want to know if they find my ideas interesting and if they have intuition of their own to add on to the mine. In those moment I dream to expand my self-expression to become us expression knowing it could bring beautiful things. The question they ask come from fear and my approach come from feeling safe. What is your reaction?
No judgment whatsoever if you realize you live often in fear, that you feel frequently unsafe emotionally. I would say: join the club!
This is not just about acknowledging that we are afraid and that we often don’t feel safe emotionally, this is about healing. I would say that the biggest work goes towards healing. Healing as a way to connect with our essence and strive in being who we really are. This encompass speaking our mind, doing what we prefer and listening to our intuition. It is quite a good way of living. You never know exactly where you are going to land when you go looking for your essence, however, nobody ever complained about what they found with their essence.
Fear is the way our organism protect us from imminent peril.
Fear is healthy. Fear is a response to threat, to protect us, to warn us.
Why, then, are we afraid of speaking up when there is no threat?
Why are we afraid to do what we like, to make ourself visible, without any danger in sight?
Why are we afraid to follow our intuition?
These questions are just to stimulate an healthy reflection that hopefully will take you out of your fight, flight or freeze response for a moment.
The scientific explanation to why we react, so often, with so much fear, can be best found in the consequences of stress. Stress produces adrenaline and cortisol in our body. These hormones are the appropriate biological response, if you are in a situation of danger, like encountering a bear or a tiger on your way. These hormones make you alert: the blood pressure goes up, the heart rate increases, the concentration of glucose in your blood increases and you are ready to face danger, your mind is focused and sharp, your reflexes are alert. You can face danger, use all resources to engage in fighting the danger and then go back to a normal functioning of the body, a sustainable operating of your biological machine.
If the physical condition created to face danger is protracted for a long period of time, it become a chronic state and you will see your body and your mind deteriorate. All sicknesses are said to be traced back to stress nowadays. So the important question to ask is:
Why do we get scared so easily? Why are we so stressed?
Well, fear comes from a lack of safety. Physical safety is not enough, we need most and foremost emotional safety and emotional safety is tricky. We should get it at home from our parents, however, that often doesn’t happen as who does not feel emotionally safe him or herself is typically not in state to offer to their children what they don’t have themselves.
The intention of providing safety to our children, is more often than not, present in parents across cultures: everybody desires to offer safety to their children, however, if you never experience emotional safety yourself, then, you have an harder task at hand that you may realize.
I feel this is where I can explain better how do I know that emotional safety is so important. IN the late fifties, psychologist Harry Harlow conducted a study with baby monkey to research the basic needs of infant and understand from there what drives their behaviours. Before was believed that babies were attaching to the one feeding them, however, Harlow’s experiment showed something different.
Harlow exposed a baby monkey to two surrogate mother, one made of wire and wood and the other made of foam, rubber and soft terry cotton. Sometimes the wooden and wire mother had food, and sometime the soft rubber mother did. The monkey was choosing the spend a significantly higher amount of time with the soft cotton surrogate mother either she had food or not. The conclusion reached with this experiment was that comfort, companionship and love are a basic need that support healthy development: feeling safe as a baseline.
Up until the fifties it was believed that attachment worked differently, that is was related to feeding children. This create an historic precedent for misconceptions and unwillingly created lack of safety that gone, then, passed down to the following generation. This alone could explain a lot of the lack of safety that is to be found in large quantities amongst people nowadays.
Another aspect to consider but that I don’t analyse to in depth is the standardization of schooling system and the structure of majority of work places in the public and private sector. There is overall a tendency towards standardization, conformism and order that is at risk to deprive the individual of his or her identity. There is less and less space to be different, to be original and authentic.
Sir Ken Robinson is famous to have said that the school system tends to kill creativity by educating people out of their creativity. The way this is done is mainly by demonizing mistake ‘what we do know is that if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. Kids will take a chance, if they don’t know they’ll have a go, they are not frightened of being wrong.’ Said Sir Ken Robinson.
A rediscovery of your relationship with your inner child and all his or her talents is definitely something I would encourage you to pursue in this quest towards safety, strength and the achievement of the most authentic version of yourself. However, this alone is a huge topic that I feel I need to keep for another time.
For now, the best first step towards healing is to acknowledge your lack of emotional safety and to embrace the idea of working to create increasingly more safety for yourself knowing that your offspring will benefit from that, as the safer you feel, the more safety you will be able to offer them.
If you are doubting if this is your case let me give you some example of how fear may manifest when you don’t feel safe:
- You may notice that you don’t feel comfortable saying what you really thing at work, with friends or even with your partner. This doesn’t need to happen everyday to highlight an issue with safety, however, if you do, sometime, refrain from speaking up when you have something to say, ask yourself ‘why’ you do it. Ask the ‘why?’ of the answer you find with the first why and keep digging with 5 whys. What you will discover about your fear and sense of emotional safety, should shade a lot of light on your personal situation and what really prevents you to express yourself freely;
- The way you occupy your time, during work, at home and in your free time, could also reveal a lot about your stress level, your fear engagement and your untapped potential. Why do you do what you do? Because it serve an higher purpose, something you feel you came to this life to accomplish? Or just because? How do you feel if you dig also here with 5 whys to find out why you do what you do. Do you function from a place of fear or from a place of safety?;
- We all possess the ability to perceive our environment, we all have intuition, however, not all of us use it. When I use my intuition and I express what my intuition brings me and I have in front of me someone that is not as comfortable with intuition I often get one of these reactions:
o How do you know that?
o How can you be sure?
o It doesn’t make any sense
To which my curiosity goes straight to a completely different level of elaboration. I want to know how they feel if they listen to what I say, I want to know if they find my ideas interesting and if they have intuition of their own to add on to the mine. In those moment I dream to expand my self-expression to become us expression knowing it could bring beautiful things. The question they ask come from fear and my approach come from feeling safe. What is your reaction?
No judgment whatsoever if you realize you live often in fear, that you feel frequently unsafe emotionally. I would say: join the club!
This is not just about acknowledging that we are afraid and that we often don’t feel safe emotionally, this is about healing. I would say that the biggest work goes towards healing. Healing as a way to connect with our essence and strive in being who we really are. This encompass speaking our mind, doing what we prefer and listening to our intuition. It is quite a good way of living. You never know exactly where you are going to land when you go looking for your essence, however, nobody ever complained about what they found with their essence.
